Burning Man Annual Report

The Burning Man organization has gotten a lot of criticism from the community for a perceived lack of transparency and I think there's been some real, legitimate concerns on that front. ​

However, they just released their2014 Annual Report and tax return (form 900) and because 2014 is the first year that the Burning Man event was fully integrated into the Burning Man Project (the 'master' organization under which all activities are undertaken, including putting on the Burning Man event), it's much more interesting than previous years.

​Now we can see how all our ticket money gets spent on That Thing In The Desert. The bad news for the drama seekers out there is that you're going to have to work to find fodder for the fire.

The blog post that accompanies the release of the annual report is a great place to start, but I'm providing some highlights below for those who just want some tidbits.

Click to see a breakdown of Burning Man expenses.

Highlights:

• $30.7m in revenue, virtually all of which comes from the Burning Man event. 
• $0 in advertising and promotion. Clearly, they don't need to pay people to talk about Burning Man.
• Permits and Fees: $3.6m. (Bureau of Land Management fees, etc).
• Heavy Equipment Rental: $2.4m. ​
• All that poopin' in the portas we do? Costs about a million dollars a year for porta potty service.
• They had around $9.6m in net assets at the end of fiscal 2014.
• They really, really love David Best, having given him $80k for the Burning Man Temple that year, $15k to build a Temple in Northern Ireland, as well as $15k to a filmmaker to partially fund completion of a documentary about David Best's life and work.
• Burning Man Arts gave $1.1 million to artists in the form of direct grants and art support services (heavy equipment, etc).
• The Burning Man Project spent $23m on putting on programming related to Black Rock City, and another $7.6m on management and general expenses of BRC and their off-playa programs. 
• Selected salaries:
  • Larry Harvey (President): $197k
  • Marian Goodell (CEO): $242k
  • Harley Dubois (Director): $179k​
  • These salaries are completely reasonable for the leadership of a non-profit at the scale Burning Man Project is. 
• 83.69% of their total expenses went directly to "program services", meaning things directly contributing to the projects they work on (including the Burning Man event), and excluding management and some other categories of expenses. For non-profits, you typically want this number as high as possible. 83% is actually pretty good. It's not world-class awesome, but it's definitely good. 

I really only have two pieces of criticism based on the form 900. First, I'd like to see more money going to support artists on the playa. 

Second, given that the the Org has been telling us that Regionals are the future (and given the population cap of BM vs. the demand to attend, they're probably right), they don't seem to spend much money supporting them. 

Overall, it's clear the organization has evolved in the right direction in terms of transparency and I think they're to be commended for it!